The Sword of Crota
by Malum Scriptor
Summary: When the Hive break through the City's defenses and slaughter thousands, Amanda Holliday must join the fight as her fellow Guardians set out to strike back at the Hive and retake the Moon.
1. Prologue

**PROLOGUE**

"I will not stand idly by as you bicker, even while half the City burns!".

The words boomed out, silenced the cacophony of disparate voices that had taken hold in the Consensus chamber. They were deep and gruff, the throat they had issued forth from made rough by years of breathing in gunsmoke and swallowing blood. The words rang in the silence, edged in steel that was not only a product of the man who spoke them.

It was said that Lord Saladin never removed his helmet. While no one could prove this, he had certainly never been seen without it. This was no exception. Even with his face hidden behind armor, every Representative present felt as if his raking gaze was boring into them.

When no reply seemed forthcoming, the golden giant continued.

"You sit here in your fortress, while flames still lick the homes of our citizens, even the very Walls that the first Guardians built. Hive abominations, servants of the Darkness itself, still stalk our streets. Guardians are fighting, _dying_, outside this room. I left the men and women of my order leaderless to come here, only to find this Consensus nothing but a pack of dregs".

He took a rasping breath, his helmet serving to hide the pain he felt as each inhalation tore at his lungs.

"You are not fit to bear even the title of Representative".

The thirteen members of the accord were struck silent. Their faces were bleached of color, palms sweaty, goose-bumps raised on their arms. The acrid stench of fear, of cold sweat and sour breath, filled the air.

One, trying to disguise her quavering voice with bravado, managed to speak after a few moments.

"How _dare_ you. The resolve of this Consensus is above question, especially by the likes of you, Vanguard". Her eyes swept over the faces of her fellow Representatives, searching desperately for some measure of support.

"Let us not forget, Saladin, why we have a Consensus at all. If your predecessors had possessed the wit to-".

Before she could speak further, Saladin's gauntleted hand closed around her neck and hoisted her, with a yelp, up into the air. He had moved with speed that seemed impossible in his bulky armor, crossing the room in the blink of an eye.

The Representative's eyes widened, clawing at the Titan's hand, trying to break his iron grip around her throat.

He spoke slowly, his voice harsh and low, a knife sliding into an enemy's ribcage.

"I will be given the respect owed to one of my position", he said, bringing the choking woman in closer. Held at his eye level, she was more than a foot above the ground, her legs kicking at the air.

"How _dare_ I?", he asked pulling her closer still until her nose was nearly pressed against the face of his helmet. Flecks of spittle spattered his armor as she wheezed and gurgled, wet mewls escaping her lips as she tried to call out for help.

He squeezed tighter. Now even gasping was beyond her. She couldn't make a noise.

"I stood on our walls with Lord Shaxx as they burned around us. Even as the Fallen guns pounded the wall to rubble, I fought until the enemy dead were piled around me. I led the counter-charge when the wall fell and the Fallen spilled into the City. I watched Guardians die that day, cut apart by vandal blades or blown apart by captains' guns, disintegrated by wire rifles. When the enemy was at our gates then you did not hesitate, did not mewl and whine; you took action. You allowed the Guardians to do what they do best. Fight".

The woman's head lolled back, her face pale and bloodless. She had stopped kicking, her muscles spasming as her brain began to shut down, neurons misfiring. Her eyes were fixed on a point in the middle distance.

Saladin trained his gaze back on her, almost forgetting that the worm still squirmed in his grip. A sneer twisted his face, unseen by the members of the Consensus.

He released his hand, letting her drop to the cold floor, boneless and limp. The Representative gasped in a deep breath, before collapsing into a fit of hacking coughs. She lay prone on the floor for some minutes, wretching, her chest heaving as air found its way back into her lungs.

It was a long time before another Representative managed to gather the courage to speak. When he did so, an Awoken, young by the standards of his race, he did not address Saladin directly. None in the chamber could bear to look on him.

Instead, he addressed the Director in a weak voice.

"What is the status of the fire control units in the affected districts?" he stammered.

The Director, the artificial intelligence that managed the City's droid population and other subsystems too complex for humans to control, spoke in a voice of inhuman cool.

"Units A1 through S9 mobilized in districts 1 and 5. Fire 57% contained. Estimated time to 100% containment; ninety-seven minutes".

The words painted a grim picture. Nearly the entire fire control force had been mobilized, and it would take another hour and a half before the fires had stopped. Assuming another Hive assault wasn't on the way.

The Awoken spoke again. "Damage?".

The Director was silent for a moment. While it had access to vast reserves of processing power, much of its attention was focused on the nearly nineteen hundred droids involved in combat the fires raging in the northern districts.

"In affected districts, estimated 45% of infrastructure destroyed or otherwise rendered unusable. Additional 13% requiring ten to twelve months for repair and reconstruction to original condition. Minimal damage to remaining 42% of structures".

"Casualties?".

"Civilian or Guardian?".

The Awoken thought for a moment. He did not want to upset Saladin further, but was unsure if asking about the civilians first would set him off.

"Civilian casualties, please", spoke Lord Saladin. The Awoken's words died on his lips, and he decided to hold his peace.

"In affected districts, estimated 70% casualties". The Consensus, collectively, swore under its breath. More than two million people dead. Maybe it wasn't that bad, they said to themselves. Estimates were estimates. But as they looked out of the great chamber windows, out over the flaming city, Hive pods still falling occasionally from the sky to mar the earth, they knew the gravity of the situation.

Lord Saladin turned his back on the Consensus and, with a roll of his shoulders, stalked toward the door. He pushed the great steel doors apart with effortless ease, leaving the august body to its deliberations. He had said his piece. They would listen to him. They had to.


	2. Chapter 1 - Holliday

**CHAPTER ONE**

The Traveller had always held back the Darkness. It armed the Guardians, protectors of the City since the Collapse, with its Light to ward off those who would destroy them. It had even sacrificed itself to beat the Darkness back in some final battle, the details lost to time. Hovering over the City like a god made real, it radiated an aura of safety. Of home. Nothing touched it, birds never neared it, and even the clouds were held back in a halo around it.

But now the stars were falling, raining down on the great steel bulwark of the City, occasionally pinging off the Traveller's surface, pitting the ivory metal with the force of their impact.

Two districts were darkened, lit only by the flames that now raged there and occasional bursts of gunfire. Jumpships filled the sky, some of them civilian models trying desperately to escape the hail of Hive pods, even risking leaving the City's airspace and braving the wilderness. Others belonged to Guardians, locked in desperate dogfights with the swarm of tombships filling the sky over the City.

Years later, once the dust had settled, they would call it the Rain of Fire. That horrendous night, the first time an enemy ever penetrated the City's walls and spilled onto its streets. A black day for the flagging remnants of humanity.

But that was in the times to come, after the horrifying effort to retake the Moon, after the Sword of Crota drank the Light of a thousand Guardians, after the Concord of Three. We must think back to that first night, the night it all began.

* * *

><p>Amanda was beginning to regret her choice of jumpship. While the time-tested Arcadia was the sturdiest model on the market, it was slow as hell. Most of its hull was solid metal, as opposed to the hardlight most types were built from. The sticks were heavy. It had <em>sticks<em>, for god's sake. Hardly advanced.

She swore under her breath as the cockpit lights flickered and the hull shook violently. Another klaxon sounded, another warning light went on, but it was just more white noise piled on top of the dozen or so other alarms that were already shrieking inside her ship.

Risking a glance away from the fore viewport, she looked down at the screens adjacent to her flight sticks. A diagram of her ship was displayed, and a line across the dorsal side was picked out in red, text next to it; _PRIMARY FUEL LINE SEVERED - ENGINE SHUTDOWN IMMINENT_.

"Shit".

The aft viewscreens showed the flight of tombships still firmly on her. While far from maneuverable, the obsidian wedges packed a lot of firepower. Having disgorged their heinous cargo of Hive soldiers into the City below, this particular group had zeroed in on Amanda's ship and started unloading on her with devilishly accurate energy weapons.

She had to do something. Her ship began to decelerate as the fuel already injected into its engines was expended. The Hive could score an easy kill on a big, slow target like that, and she'd be damned if she was going to be an easy kill. A hellish purple bolt of plasma raced past her bow as if to punctuate the thought.

Putting down her ship within the City was an option, but every rooftop and street were packed with civilians fleeing from the Hive ground forces, and fire control units racing towards the blaze only thickened the traffic. Not exactly an ideal LZ.

Amanda could see another salvo incoming on her aft screen, and jerked right on the controls, sending her jumpship darting out of the way of the slow-moving projectiles, the lead bolt very nearly missing her tail.

There were five ships tailing her, and every friendly in the air seemed to be in a similar position. No help from any of her fellow Guardians, then. Which was fine. Amanda did a lot of solo missions, and tombships were easy pickings compared to Fallen skiffs.

Five though...

Seven seconds since they had fired the last salvo. Fifteen seconds for their guns to recharge. She had eight seconds to work with before they holed her rapidly slowing ship from stem to stern.

Plenty of time.

Amanda brought the nose down to a sharp angle, dropping quickly out of the sky with the help of the Arcadia's considerable tonnage. She flicked on her afterburners, pouring every last drop of fuel into gaining as much speed as she could.

This course brought her just above the City's rooftops, going down a street with relatively tall buildings flanking her. Effectively penning herself in against the Hive. If they fired again before she could shake them...

No point dwelling.

Her face was sheened with sweat, eyes burning as she refused to blink and risk missing some critical detail. She needed some split-second timing for this.

Pulling even lower, now firmly between the two rows of buildings, she managed to bait three of the five into following her down into the strait. The other two pulled up and away, speeding off to search for another target. They thought she was done for.

And that really pissed her off.

Five seconds. A dark purple glow was building around the guns mounted in the tombships' prows. Her ship was warning her that the energy signatures indicated they would fire soon. She pressed a button, killing that warning along with the rest. Deathly quiet descended over the ship as it raced between steel-shod structures.

Just as she thought she had finally achieved some measure of peace, another alarm started up. A blinking box of text in the corner of her fore viewport. She flicked her eyes over to it.

_NO FUEL. NO FUEL. NO FUEL._

She began rapidly decelarating, and the tombships started to close the gap fast.

Before the tombships could finish her with a final barrage, she did three things in very short order. First, she flipped her sidearm's safety off. Next, she slammed a fist down on a large red button, and there was a rush of air as the trap door below her feet opened and the cabin depressurised. And lastly, she pulled back on the stick as hard as she could.

Never one for wearing a flight harness, Amanda merely slipped out of her seat and into the freezing night air. About five meters off the ground, she was probably going to die, but that was okay.

There was a blinding light above her, followed by the sounds of screaming metal and a munitions cache detonating. Then there was a rush of overpressure that played hell with her head and sent her careening downwards even faster. Intense heat pricked the skin of her back, even through her armor.

Amanda managed a grim smile, more a rictus than a grin, as the wind tore at her. Dead she might be, but easy kill she was not. The three fireballs of shrapnel that had once been tombships could attest to that.

Her only regret - for she was fairly certain that this fall was it for her - was that she couldn't bait all five of the tombships into the corridor of buildings and score a kill on the full squadron.

Now, she just had to not break her neck when she landed on the rapidly approaching concrete.


	3. Chapter 2 - Grounded

**Well, here's another chapter for you good folks out there! I hope you're all enjoying it so far!**

**CHAPTER TWO**

_This is going to suck_ was a phrase that Amanda didn't use a lot, but she felt it applied pretty aptly to her current situation.

Plummeting through the night air towards the street below, propelled by the explosion of her Arcadia and the tailing tombships, everything was a maddening rush of fear, adrenaline, and cold that clawed at her lungs. Training kicked in, instinct took over, and she acted.

With only seconds to do so, Amanda did what little she could to dampen her fall. Having fallen face-down, she arched her back, pulled her arms up, and straightened her legs above her. This position allowed her to maneuver, if only a little.

From there she did something akin to a half-flip, bringing her chest forward and up, and trying to pull her legs down towards the ground. The goal was to get her front parallel to the ground instead of pointed directly at it.

Now at something approaching a standing position she bent her knees slightly, wrapped her arms around her head to cushion it against the blow she'd suffer on the second impact after she bounced, and tried against all instinct to relax her muscles.

All this happened as one fluid motion, in the space of about a second and a half. Adrenaline was pumping through her, making time seem to slow and speed up alternately. Despite the battle raging ten blocks away and the furious battle in the skies above, everything was quiet, as if muffled.

Then she slammed into the ground, managing to do so feet-first. Mind-shattering pain flared up in her legs, white-hot, so furious at to nearly cause consciousness to desert her. The edges of her mind seemed to blur, and her vision failed for a moment.

She managed to hold onto reality long enough to throw herself sideways as she landed, the strain on her legs caused by such a motion doubling her over with pain. If she fell backwards or forwards, the transfer of momentum to her skull would probably kill her.

Amanda skidded along the concrete, bouncing about a meter into the air. The asphalt tore into the skin of her legs, her back, her chest as she screeched to a final halt on the street. Even with her arms protecting it, her head suffered a vicious blow that left her senses reeling.

The raw agony of her landing had retreated at this point, but she knew that this was just a side-effect of the adrenaline, making her feel uninjured when she certainly was.

After lying on the pavement half-conscious for god knows how long, she started to move. Wiggling her toes, flexing her hands, trying to make sure she hadn't been crippled. Pain spiked into her with every movement, but that was good. Pain meant she wasn't dead. Her spine was, for the most part, intact.

Slowly, she placed her palms flat and tried to push herself upright. Flames lanced through her chest as she strained to haul herself to a sitting position, and she collapsed back to the ground. Ragged breaths and bloody spit were all she managed to accomplish for the next few minutes.

As her senses returned to her, she began to be aware of things happening around her. The tramp of hundreds of feet, men and women shouting or crying out, occasional vehicles racing past her. In the distance, a background track to the human suffering she was hearing, furious gunfire marching ever closer, the sharp pop of detonations and the rumble of collapsing buildings. The air carried the acrid stench of gunsmoke, and the cold wind carried thick dust.

Again she tried to rise, pouring every ounce of willpower into beating back the torture howling at the edges of her mind. Ribs were cracked it seemed, she wasn't sure how many. The sheer concussive force of the fall had bruised her badly, and she wouldn't be surprised if her whole left side was deep purple.

This time, a pair of hands gripped her shoulders, trying to pull her up to her feet. The suddenness and force of the motion produced something between a sob and a groan from her, followed by a curse as she bit back tears.

She managed to focus enough to see the person aiding her; a civilian, a young man with a dun workman's uniform and black boots. He was looking at her with concern, his hands still firmly on her shoulders.

"Fine", she managed to growl through gritted teeth.

Amanda shrugged him off and tried to step forward before collapsing back onto the ground, her legs buckling under her. It felt as if a knife had been jammed into the bone of her calves.

"Ma'am?".

With no small effort or pain, Amanda managed to roll onto her back and look up at her helper. A light dusting of grey coated his clothes and hair, pulverised concrete and ash from all the fires. His face was smeared with smoke and charcoal.

He extended a hand.

She gripped it with her gloved fist, putting most of her weight on him. Finally she was on her feet, resolved to not be such a prick and just take help where she could get it.

"Thanks", she muttered.

He just nodded, throwing one of her arms over his shoulder.

"Where can I getcha to, ma'am?".

She thought for a moment. Much as she needed to join the fight as soon as possible, she wouldn't do much good clutching onto a civvie for dear life. She'd probably just get both of them killed.

"Infirmary. Hospital. Nearest place you can get me where they can set a bone".

He nodded, and they began hobbling off down the street. She tapped his shoulder, stopping him for a moment.

"Where do you work?", she asked him. If he was a dockworker, he might have a first-aid kit. Maybe something to help take the edge off, so she could walk.

He gave her an odd look. "Maintenance. Jumpships mostly".

"So, no chance you have biofoam or morphine?".

He shook his head, and they continued on.

Innumerable people thronged the street, all in varying states of grime, some running and some moving at little more than a stroll. There were a few injured, but only one looked about as bad as her. A woman, middle-aged and flax-haired, was clutching a rag to a rapidly-spreading bloodstain on her abdomen.

Noticing they had stopped moving, she turned to look at her companion. His eyes were fixed on the same woman, torn between going to help her and getting the Guardian someplace where she could be treated. Maybe he thought he could do both.

"Come on", she said gruffer than she'd meant. "I'm not gonna make it to a sick bay without your help".

He furrowed his brow. "She doesn't look good". Then turning to look at her, "You're a Guardian. Don't you have some training, maybe something we could-".

"Gutshot", Amanda said matter-of-factly. They were wasting time here. "Even if I was in any shape to operate on her, she needs a field hospital. Let's just hope she makes it to one".

His eyes lingered on the woman for a second, a shadow passing over his face, before he tore his gaze from her and fixed it ahead of him. They began to trudge down the street once more.

"You got a name?", she asked him.

He nodded, looking forward. "Mitchell".

"Amanda", she replied.

"Well Amanda, it's about five blocks to the nearest...what'd you call it, sick bay?". She nodded in affirmation. Walking in her state was hard enough without having to talk as well.

"Nautical terminology". She cocked her head, thinking for a second. "I mean, we don't do wet navies so much anymore, but...well you do jumpship maintenance".

"Yes, but most civilian boats don't have medical facilities onboard".

* * *

><p>Eventually they managed to make it to a shopfront that hadn't been locked up or temporarily vacated, one with a red neon sign that read "<em>DOCTOR ISHI<em>". The O's in "Doctor" were all dark, and the first I in "Ishi" was flickering.

Great. She'd managed to live through a one-sided dogfight and the subsequent five meter fall, only to have to survive some hack job doc that a maintenance worker had brought her to. Mistaked had clearly been made.

Still, it was better than trying to crawl into battle on her belly.

**Okay, so I'm sure in a Destiny story you want some action and this chapter was a bit lacking, but I promise promise PROMISE you will get plenty next chapter. That should go up Friday night, by the way.**


	4. Chapter 3 - Close Encounters

**CHAPTER THREE**

Fifteen minutes later, Amanda stepped out onto the street, her chest cavity packed with biofoam and her shattered tibias shot full of bone-knitting polymer. The former coagulant would keep her broken ribs in place and, if there was any internal bleeding, it would help to staunch it for now. It would be enough to keep her going for a few more hours.

The scene outside was a grim one. To the north, columns of thick black smoke clawed at a sky already thick with Hive tombships joined in furious battle with those Guardians not already on the ground. The din of gunfire and the scream of energy weapons' discharge had drawn even closer.

Amidst all of this, an inhuman cry split the night, guttural and edged in sadistic glee.

It was the hunting cry of thralls.

Fixing her helmet on her battered head, Amanda began to push her way through the horde of civilians fleeing the Hive. She could barely see through the crowd of dishevelled men and women filtering past her.

They were all heading away from Widow's Ward; that meant it was where she needed to go.

The Guardian set off down the avenue, making slow progress amid the hundreds of civilians filtering past her. Though her injuries kept her from moving quickly, her status as a Guardian meant that she cut a swathe through the crowd. Battered civies parted around her like a wave around a rock.

* * *

><p>Eventually the river of refugees thinned to a stream, then a trickle; soon she found herself walking alone down a boulevard at the edge of Widow's Ward, abandoned as the beleaguered district was cleared.<p>

The sounds of battle had dimmed for the moment, a palpable silence hanging in the air. Every step she took echoed down the deserted thoroughfare.

Amanda came to a building that had collapsed and scattered its rubble across the street blocking her passage. She was forced to backtrack and turn left at the last intersection.

As she turned onto the side street, a flicker of motion registered in the corner of her eye and she reflexively ducked back behind the nearest building.

The quiet was broken by a harsh bark of command. Pressing herself up against the wall and peeking out of cover, she spotted her enemy. A pack of thralls was stalking down the street, half a dozen of them. Heading up the column was an acolyte, three emerald eyes gleaming out of its skull-like face.

One of the thralls had broken from the group to feast on a corpse half-buried underneath a pile of rubble, and the acolyte had paused to haul it back in line, clubbing the beast's head with the butt of its scythe-like firearm as it warbled a reprimand.

The grim procession was moving towards her, and there was nowhere to hide. The only choice here was to neutralize them. Moving with deliberate slowness, she unslung her rifle and shouldered it.

The thrall was back in line, and the lance of animate corpses began to advance again. Amanda pulled a magazine from her belt and clipped it in, patting it to make sure it was secure.

The squadron of alien cadavers was rushing towards her position, skittering over the rubble with fluid ease. Gun in her right hand, she reached down with her left and grabbed a grenade, priming the incendiary charge.

The Hive had closed to nearly ten meters; point-blank range in a gunfight. This wouldn't be a gunfight, though; once they spotted her, those thralls would rush in and try to finish her off in a close-quarters brawl. Their claws gleamed in the Traveller's reflected light, already slick with crimson lifeblood. They had already killed today.

Amanda flicked the safety off, sliding her hand up the rifle's body and catching hold of the sliding rack. She snapped it back, chambering a round.

That did it. The tell-tale _clack_ was deafening in the silence. Amanda tried not to breathe.

The acolyte stopped in its tracks, leering eyes searching over the building she took cover behind. When the thralls tried to rush onwards, their leader roared them to a halt, holding up its weapon. Reluctantly, the feral creatures paused in their advance, shifting restlessly. They were stopped; it was now or never.

Amanda burst from cover and out in front of her foe, rifle levelled at the crimson-armored acolyte. Her trigger finger pulsed as a trio of bullets punched into her target's chest, flooring it in a puff of dust. Like a corpse interned within a mausoleum and suddenly exposed to the air, it crumbled, carapace plates clattering to the floor as the body within melted away into darkness and corruption.

The thralls screeched and chittered as their leader fell, baring fangs and claws as they charged towards her in a mad dash.

Letting her rifle fall to her side, shoulder-strap holding it in place, Amanda hurled the grenade overhand at the cluster of thralls. As the creatures charged forwards on their backward-jointed legs, the explosive landed amidst them.

There was a flash of white-hot light that burned her retinas, as the grenade's payload of thermite detonated and jets of fire licked at the night.

At ten meters she was mostly unharmed; sharp bits of rock sprayed her, intense heat leaving her cheeks red. The thralls were not so lucky - two of them were obliterated by the blaze of artificial flame and another was slammed into a glass storefront, crashing into the abandoned interior.

Three were still rushing towards her. Her rifle too heavy to be brought to bear quickly, she drew her sidearm with her free left hand. Amanda popped off one, two, three shots. Two of them struck home, blowing the first thrall's arm off and shattering the second's skull.

"Shit".

One thrall was still on its feet, darting across the pavement like a shadow. She thumbed the cylinder release and popped out the magazine, spilling spent casings to the ground. Anchoring the pistol grip against her belt, she pulled a three-shell speedloader from her ammunition pouch and fitted it against the cylinder.

Before she could snap the clip into place, there was a blood chilling cry and she was slammed to the ground, her helmet knocked against the concrete by the brute force of the thrall's charge.

It was on top of her then, all thrashing limbs and tearing claws. Unloaded revolver still in hand, she cracked it's eyeless face with the butt of the gun, cracking the dense black bone. It roared in defiance, talons tearing at her chest and ripping her armor apart.

She slammed the gun into her assailant's head again and again, until finally it reared up above her and knocked the weapon out of her hand with one swipe of its skeletal arm. The hand cannon went clattering away.

Her adversary raised a chitinous claw, meaning to slam it down and pierce her heart. Amanda's hand darted up to intercept the blow, seizing the creature's wrist as it made to finish the wounded Guardian.

Her muscles strained to hold back the rapacious attack, and her other hand snapped to her belt, scrambling frantically for the knife she knew was fastened there. Unable to hold back its other arm, Amanda felt the thrall's hand close around her throat, nails digging into her flesh and sending rivulets of hot blood running down her neck.

The creature began to squeeze the life from Amanda with inhuman strength, its fleshless hand crushing her windpipe as claws threatened to puncture her throat.

Finally her gloved hand found the knife, closing around the carbon grip.

Tears of pain streaming down her face as she fought to breathe, the Guardian jammed the knife upwards with all the strength she could muster, sinking the point into it's bone-plated gorge. The dagger struck true, and as she twisted the blade freezing black ichor spewed from the wound.

The undead beast atop her was too stubborn to know it was dead, and even as the stuff of its life ran down her arm it continued to batter her, mercilessly pressing down on her.

But after a moment it's grip around her neck weakened. A low, mewling moan issued forth from its stinking maw, a wet death-growl.

Finally it collapsed on top of her, nearly crushing her beneath it's bulk. Even as she struggled to dislodge it, the dead thrall began to decay. Bone turned to grime and filth, muscle and sinew melting into brackish ooze. Eventually nothing was left but dust and corruption, staining her skin with foulness.

Amanda grimaced as she shook herself free of the creature's ruins. Popping to her feet as quickly as her rapidly-healing bones would allow, she brought her rifle to bear and swept the field before her.

It was clear, thank the Traveller.

Wincing with every step, blood from a dozen minor wounds drying on her skin, she hobbled off the way the Hive had come. Seven kills so far, plus however many were in the tombships.

Looking up at the great white orb hanging over the City, she swore a silent oath that she would at least triple that count before she died.


	5. Chapter 4 - Concourse

**Wow, what a long time between updates. I'm sorry about that gang, I know (or hope rather) that you've been looking forward to this for a solid week. Well, another (and much longer) update should be up sooner this time. I apologize for the wait.**

**CHAPTER FOUR**

The City covered just over twelve thousand kilometers, Widow's Ward and the Shard eighteen hundred of those. The Hive was contained within these two districts, hundreds of Guardians fighting tooth and nail to keep them penned in. The suddenness and ferocity of their attack had left them with significant gains, but now they had stalled in the face of the City's defenders.

The battle in the air was being won, slowly; massed tombships had devastated the Guardians initially, but as the titanic clash broke down into individual dogfights the humans' superior maneuverability and speed began to turn the tide.

The picture on the ground followed suit. Swarms of thralls, backed by the devastating firepower of knights and acolytes, had rushed Guardian positions and overwhelmed them. But as Hive forces had spread out through the City, they were forced to break down into smaller units. Without the fire support of their upper echelons, packs of thralls were easy pickings for the regrouping Guardians.

So Amanda found herself hunting through the ruins, at times crawling to avoid the detection of a Hive column, at others sprinting down the labyrinthine streets as she pursued a patrol that had become isolated. Night turned to day, and back to night, and still she fought, slowly but surely thinning the numbers of her foe.

Eventually, as the sun rose on the third day, the battle drew to a close. She would always remember where she was.

* * *

><p>Up on the flat roof of a concrete three-story, sniper rifle she'd found somewhere rested on the guard-rail. Shot after shot rang out, head after cadaverous alien head was blown to bits. Finally she ran out of targets.<p>

So she waited. This was the Alpha Concourse, a highway from Widow's Ward into the Core District. The Concourse was effectively the jugular, and if the Hive gained control of it they would have a stranglehold on the entire City.

For the last twelve hours, a major Hive offensive had been trying to sweep over the blockade of concrete and Guardians holding it from them. Twenty times their undead foes had rushed onto the highway, thralls screaming and guns blazing, and twenty times they had been fought to a standstill, picked apart by sniper fire and jumpship attack runs.

Rosy light and pre-dawn chill bled into the heat of a summer day, the sky turning from grey to deep blue. Still the Concourse was silent, Guardians crouched behind smoking barricades, clutching their weapons in white-knuckled hands and hardly daring to breathe and break the silence. Hardly daring to hope that the battle was over.

Slowly, the comms chatter began to quiet. Before the bandwidth was populated by fire orders for jumpships, cries for aid as a fireteam somewhere was pinned by unrelenting fire, as a Warlock bled out in an alley, as yet another position was overrun by the dark hordes.

Now it was empty.

Amanda held her breath, eyes squeezed shut, listening.

"_Is that it_?".

The garbled transmission broke the quietude gripping her heart.

"_Negative, it...Wait. Not sure. Can we get eyes on_?".

Amanda sighted up, sweeping the bombed-out blocks of flats, the smoldering skyscrapers, searching for any movement.

Inside her helmet, she chinned her comms to the general frequency.

Breathe.

"No eyes on, I repeat I have no eyes on. It-".

Breathe.

"It looks clear".

She hardly knew the words were hers. Surprised that they had come from her mouth, rolled off her tongue.

There was an ear-splitting moment of silence., the general freq lit up, a flood of overlapping voices all fighting for dominance on the airwaves. Sighs of relief, shouts of glee, prayers and supplications to the Traveller and its Light, confirmations of "_No eyes on_" "_All clear_" "_No enemy presence_".

Raising herself slowly from the crouch she had held for half a day, joints creaking, injured ribs and legs straining to bear her weight.

Moving with aching deliberation, she set down the rifle on the rooftop, unchambering a round and then popping the magazine. Disassembling the weapon, cleaning every piece. Then putting it back together, homing the mag, chambering a bullet.

She wasn't sure why she did it. It was all she really could do.

With a sigh that belied how tired she was, she slung the sniper rifle over her shoulder, making sure the strap was secure, and began the long descent back to the street below.

Once outside, sun beating down on her ash-stained cape, she began to feel very distant. Walking down the road on autopilot, taking in everything she saw.

An exhausted fireteam, all wounded, all scarred, leaned up against a shattered shopfront. A Hunter, clutching something in both hands, kissing it, weeping before pausing to pray, then weeping again. A Titan, slumped behind a barricade, smoldering hole through his helmet.

Someone came up to her, she wasn't sure who, or what, and put a hand on her shoulder. She couldn't hold eye contact, could barely focus on anything. It spoke, but the words were mute and meaningless.

Suddenly, Amanda felt very tired. It was as if every blow she had taken, every shot she'd fired, every hour she had been awake had suddenly come slamming down upon her shoulders. It floored her, like being slapped by a giant, and she began to sink bonelessly to the floor. The hand on her tightened, the thing in front of her began to shout but she could barely hear it, slipping from consciousness.


	6. Chapter 5 - Aftermath

**CHAPTER FIVE**

Amanda often forgot that she was human. Funny. How could you forget a thing like that? Trees don't forget they're trees, a Ghost can't forget it's a Ghost.

The problem was, Amanda wasn't entirely sure she was human. Parts of her, the flesh and blood and bone, that was human. Her brain, all those synapses and the neurons firing down them, they were human too.

But another part of her, the part of her that was Amanda Holliday...that was something else entirely.

That was a Guardian.

* * *

><p>She did not wake up quickly. Her rousing was a slow, drowsy affair. The painkillers were like an anchor, dragging her back down into oblivion whenever she tried to rise above it. Her eyelids were shut with steel, her arms were lead.<p>

But eventually, she managed to wake. Get her eyelids open for a second at a time. Flex her fingers, her toes.

Amanda was in a cool blue room, soft white light filling up the place and leaving it shadowless, lacking definition. Beside her bed was a steel rack, bags of jewel-colored fluids hanging from it. Each had a thin IV tube running from it, trailing across the floor and up into her wrist. They pumped her full of drugs with names like paracetamol and fentanyl.

She had been undressed, her armor removed and replaced by a tunic of soft, warm fabric, the same fabric her sheets were made of.

Rolling over onto her side, she found that her ribs were sore, her muscles ached, and her calves were stiff as a board; other than that, she felt pretty much intact. Amanda sat up, getting her legs off the edge of the bed.

Calling out for assistance, Amanda was greeted by the featureless face of a medical frame. It asked her to remain in bed, but she countermanded it and ordered it to unhook her from the IV. After that unpleasantness was done with, she sent the frame to fetch her gear, which it returned promptly.

Once it left the room, Amanda stripped out of her hospital gown and dressed herself in Hunter's garb. Dun bodice and green cape, hood pulled over her head. It felt like home.

Ten minutes after regaining consciousness, she left the hospital wing and made her way out into the Tower courtyard.

* * *

><p>The Tower was always abuzz with activity, but now, emerging out onto the courtyard overlooking the City, it was utter chaos.<p>

Wounded Guardians were being unloaded from jumpships, hundreds of which still circled the sky over the Tower, waiting for a bay to open up in the Slip. Dockworkers swarmed the decks, working double-time to accommodate the flood of incoming craft, overseers screaming orders barely heard over the whine of engines.

The men and women with injuries of all types were streaming past her towards the hospital wing, broken bones and plasma burn. Some walked unaided, others were carried broken in the arms of comrades, the very worst hauled in on grav-beds.

The City below was different too. Nearly a sixth of it was smoking ruin; though the fires were mostly out, columns of black smoke still marched endlessly upwards, marring the blue perfection of the sky. The Alpha Concourse was still littered with rubble, bodies, and wrecked vehicles. Cleanup crews of frames and masked humans were at work on the streets, sweeping away the ash and retrieving fallen bodies.

And over all of it, like white birds, were the Ghosts. Hundreds of them flying out over the Walls and into the wilds beyond, beginning their search for new Guardians to replace those lost in the fighting. It would be years before so many could be found.

Amanda paused when she saw this. So much death. How many Ghosts were in the sky, right now, at this moment? How many hundreds of Guardians were dead? How many that she knew?

Suddenly she was seized with the overwhelming urge to find out who had died in the battle, who had survived, who was offworld. Where was Holborn? Where were Banshee, and Achernar, and Cass, and Lyra?

Body still leaden as the drugs worked their way out of her system, Amanda made her way through the sea of armored bodies, Hunter's eyes darting over the crowd, searching for the distinctive red chassis of a reference frame.

After a minute she spotted one, forging towards it, shouldering aside her fellow Guardians.

Reaching it, it turned towards her, palms locked in front of it. "How may I be o-".

"Casualties", she blurted out, her voice hoarse when it had not been before. "Can you...can you access the casualty figures?".

It hesitated a moment, as if slighted at being cut off.

"I have access, Guardian", it spoke in an almost-human voice, the tone too flat.

"I need to know...did a Titan named Holborn survive? And one named Banshee". "Banshee-44", she corrected herself. This was an urgency she had not felt all through the battle, even when fighting for her life. Amanda had never palled at the thought of her own death. But faced with the possibility of such a fate befalling her brothers and sisters in arms...

"Guardians Holborn and Banshee-44 are not listed as wounded or killed in action. However, casualties are still being processed, and recovery teams are currently engaged in locating Guardians. I advise you to check again once-".

"Others, other Guardians. Achernar, Cassilda, Lyra", she spoke, cutting it off again. Not in the first wave of casualties at least. That was good. She was going to assume they were alive. Holborn was too tough anyways, the old bastard, and Banshee was never without some slug-throwing abomination of a weapon. They'd be okay.

"Guardian Achernar is not listed as wounded or killed in action. Guardian Lyra is confirmed as wounded in action. Guardian Cassilda is confirmed as killed in action".

Amanda didn't feel anything, not at first. Just nodded. Cass was dead.

"Check again", she ordered, then amending it with,"Just for safety's sake".

"Of course, Guardian". There was a pause as it processed her request.

"Guardian Achernar is confirmed as neither wounded or killed in action, having reported to the Slip approximately thirteen seconds ago. Guardian Lyra is confirmed as wounded in action. Guardian Cassilda is confirmed as killed in action".

She nodded again and began to speak. "Could you check-".

Then a tidal wave bore down on her, locking her jaw shut and tying her tongue into a thousand knots. She couldn't talk, couldn't move from that spot. She became a fixed point in time, replaying the last minute of her life over and over again in her head.

Cass was dead. Hundreds of Guardians were dead, maybe thousands. There had been a lot of death in the past seventy-two hours. This was no different.

Cass was dead and she just had to-

Couldn't bear to finish the thought. What could the end of that sentence possibly be? Had to what? Had to accept that? Bullshit. Cass was ten times the Guardian Amanda was, she was so damned good a Ghost might just bring her back a second time.

Except it didn't work like that. Cass wasn't going to come back. Cass was somewhere in the City, eaten by a pack of thralls or smashed by a knight. There was a hole in her chest as wide as a church door, her head melted by a beam so hot that her eyes were just a puddle at her feet. Cass was a smoldering corpse, still strapped into her crashed jumpship. She'd made it all the way to the Tower before collapsing, guts spilling out through the hands.

Cass could be anything or anywhere right now, except alive.


	7. Communique 1

**COMMUNIQUE**

_BY ORDER OF THE CITY CONSENSUS AND THE GUARDIAN VANGUARD_

ALL OFFWORLD GUARDIANS IMMEDIATE / REPEAT AND RELAY

We hereby declare that the City is in a state of war, and additionally that organized combat operations on the Moon will commence in 72 hours. This declaration is in response to the recent attack on the City by lunar-based Hive forces.

Effective immediately we declare that all Guardians must extricate themselves from current engagements both on and off-world, and report back to the Tower for briefing.

Any Guardians with intelligence regarding the Hive presence on the Moon should report immediately to the Vanguard for debriefing.


	8. Chapter 6 - In Memoriam

**CHAPTER SIX**

Guardians didn't spend much time with civilians, excluding Tower personnel. Despite the symbiotic relationship between the two, there was a gulf between regular folks and their gun-toting, planet-hopping protectors. Go figure.

So it was in an abandoned nightclub in the middle of Widow's Ward, not a soul for blocks around, that Cass' memorial was held.

Amanda was there, as well as Holborn, Banshee, and of course Lyra. It had been her idea, after all. She'd spent thirteen hours pinned inside this particular building by a dozen acolytes, the scorched walls and shattered masonry corroborating her story.

Lyra managed to unearth some liquor and soon all of them, except Banshee, were seated at the wood-finished plasteel bar with drinks in hand. The cobalt exo was tinkering with a dead Ghost he had found, cracked open like a white walnut. "Sacrilege", Holborn called it. "Boredom" was Banshee's counter-offer.

Uncomfortable minutes of silence passed. Finally Holborn took it upon himself to talk.

"Perhaps we should say a few words. Something...nice. I suppose".

Banshee, without looking up from his pet project, said, "Princely words, Holborn. Truly inspirational. I congratulate you".

The Titan's broad face, fringed in the dark fur of his collar, reddened at this. "I'm a Guardian not a wordsmith, Banshee. If I'm so useless, why don't you say something?".

"I never professed any aptitude at eulogizing. Just thought you could use some encouragement. You seemed a bit wooden". The exo's synthetic smile was endearing.

"I'll say something", Lyra said, rising to her feet and setting aside the bottle she had been drinking from, drops of amber fluid sloshing onto the countertop. "After fifteen years, I should know enough about Cass to say something".

The cloaked woman stood there for a moment, leaning on the bar, eyes fixed on a point in the middle distance.

"Cass was a good woman. A good Hunter. A good Guardian. She was always something of a leader in the Band of-".

"We never settled on a name!", Holborn cried, cutting her off. "We are _not_ the Band of Wolves, and for the record I'm still in favor of Holborn's Host". He turned his gaze on Banshee. "Back me up here, Ban".

"Well", Banshee said, fingers buried in the inner workings of the Ghost, "We never settled on a name. And Band of Wolves is a terrible name". Holborn let out a harsh bark of laughter, clapping a massive hand on the exo's shoulder. Lyra shot him a poisonous look.

"But", Banshee continued, "So is Holborn's Host. They're all truly terrible".

Holborn's ruddy face fell, and Lyra returned a mocking note of laughter.

"Well", Amanda chimed in, eyes still in her drink. "What do you suggest, Ban?".

Banshee looked up, setting aside the Ghost for a moment and swivelling in his stool to turn towards the rest of the group. His ghostly blue-white eyes swept the faces of his fellow Guardians.

"Banshee's Bandits".

Never had the City heard a more raucous and concerted chorus of dissent. Lyra was shouting "Fuck you" over and over, Holborn had cupped his hand around his mouth like a megaphone as he booed the suggestion, and even Amanda managed a broad grin. All of them were smiling, and laughing, the drink serving to loosen their tongues.

Once the laughter began to die, tears still in the corners of their eyes, cheeks aching from smiles stretched wide, Amanda spoke again.

"How about it though?".

Lyra was the next to regain control of her tongue. "How, uh, how about what?".

"The name. The one she wanted. What's so bad about being the Band of Wolves?".

Lyra, trying to remain somber through her tittering, nodded. "I think it's a good idea. No better reason for a name than honoring a fallen Guardian, right?". Lyra looked around, locking eyes with Holborn, then Banshee. "Would it honestly kill you to have the fireteam not named after you?".

Banshee was quiet. Holborn's eyes found the floor.

"It might kill me a little...", the abashed Titan replied.

"Oh c'mon", Lyra said, sidling over to Amanda's side and throwing an arm over her shoulder. "Look at Miss Mopey over here, wouldja? Look at her sad eyes, and her sad face, and her sad hair", she spoke with a leer. "Fuck you", Amanda muttered, running a hand through her blonde hair.

Holborn pursed his lips. "She does look sad".

Then he broke, shoulders heaving with a sigh. "I'm sorry. I oughta be treating this with a bit more respect, shouldn't I. I know it's been hard on you Amanda, but we're all sore. We're all hurting. Just...you're right, actually. Band of Wolves it is".

They all paused, eyes on Banshee.

He looked up at them, eyes wide with surprise. "Oh, you thought I was actually...no, of course it's Band of Wolves. Banshee's Bandits is a terrible name".

The decision was followed by the clinking of bottles in cheers, and something passing for "hip-hip-hurray!".

There was more drinking, more silence. Guardians weren't the most social animals, even those who operated as part of a fireteam. Dealing with loss was a peculiarity for men and women of their distinction; death in the Guardians' ranks was common enough not to warrant mourning, but they were still human.

"Anyone talk to Achernar?", Lyra asked the room.

Banshee and Amanda shook their heads, but Holborn spoke up. "I did. Saw him yesterday morning. That fancy jumpship he just got himself, the Kestrel or whatnot, it-".

"Kestrel?", Amanda asked rhetorically, cutting him off and raising the bottle to her lips. "Regulus, Holborn. It was a Regulus".

Holborn stared at her for a moment. "Anyways, it got taken down outside the City. Seven tombships he said, through you can never tell with those purple bastards-".

"Holborn!", Lyra hissed, interrupting him again.

"What?".

She stared at him in mild shock. "Purple bastards? What the actual fuck, Holborn?".

"ANYWAYS", he continued, determined to push through to the end of his story.

"Well?", Amanda asked.

"Well what?", Holborn replied.

"You were saying? About Achernar". There was a long pause. "He was shot down outside the City".

Holborn scrunched up his face. You could see him, grasping at the memory as it fled from him, disappearing into the aether.

"Thirteen tombships, ringing any bells?". Lyra could barely believe this.

"It was...no, no he...No, it's gone". Holborn shrugged and cocked his head.

Lyra muttered something in disbelief, taking another drink.

"Well, I hope he's okay", said Amanda. Holborn nodded as if to reassure her.

Banshee rose to his feet, stretching in a gesture learned rather than really necessary. "It's getting late. We've got forty-one hours to get our gear together, get ready to go".

"Oh, piss off, you don't even need to sleep". That was Lyra, her dark cheeks flushed pink. She was well past buzzed at this point in the night - morning, technically.

Banshee rolled his eyes, another human gesture that had taken more time than it was worth to perfect. "True, but you clearly do. And along with sleep, I'd recommend some strong stims and something with lots of carbs".

Banshee turned to leave, and Lyra sent him off with a one-fingered salute. Amanda found it hard to imagine that he wasn't smiling as he walked out the door of the ruined club.

Soon after, Holborn made his excuses, citing a need to get his ship in order. A few minutes after Banshee had left, it was just Amanda and Lyra.

Amanda turned from her drink to see that Lyra was staring at her. Her usually umber eyes were black pools. She had the drawn mouth of someone deciding whether or not to say something. Something important and, no doubt, awkward.

Amanda took another swig, lifting the bottle to her lips and finishing off the last of it. "Did you have something you wanted to tell me, Lyra?".

Lyra was quiet for a second. Amanda could see the woman weighing her words carefully, sounding them out in her head.

"Cass told me", she finally managed.

Now Amanda was given pause. All she could hear was the beating of her heart, the sounds of blood rushing in her ears. It was that white noise that always seemed to descend on her when she knew something bad was going to happen, but couldn't stop it.

"She told you what?", Amanda asked, managing to not be too stony.

"About you. And her".

And there it was. Amanda sighed a deep sigh, her shoulders heaving. She leaned forward imperceptibly, resting a bit more of her weight on the bar. They were the heaviest four words she had ever heard...well, maybe the second heaviest. Just being reminded of it cut at her a bit, reopened the wounds she received when Cass died. Already her grief had started to scar over. Now that work was undone.

"Well, I'll be frank here, I don't know how to respond to that".

Lyra bit her lip. "I know, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have brought it up. I just wanted you to know. That I knew. It seemed...fair".

Amanda got up to go. "Fair? Nothing about this situation is fucking fair". She pushed away from her seat, letting her bottle fall and spill its contents over the bar.

Lyra grimaced. "Amanda...I'm sorry, I just thought that I should tell y-".

"You thought?", Amanda railed, turning on her. "You are _clearly_ not thinking bringing this...shit up right now". Heat was welling up behind her eyes, but she fought it down, stamped out the tears before they could spill onto her cheeks.

Lyra was at a loss of words. She was a rash woman, and drunk, which only exacerbated the issue. The Warlock clearly knew she'd made a mistake, but now she couldn't find a way to correct it.

Amanda, her lips twisted into a snarl, turned her back on Lyra and made for the door. "I have a war to go fight".

**I hope all of you are still enjoying reading this as much as I am writing it. This one took a while, which is part of why updates died down for a bit there. I hope the more human aspects of this appeal to all the Destiny fans out there; if not, the next one should grab your attention.**

**Stay tuned, and stay brilliant!**


	9. Chapter 7 - The Moon

**CHAPTER SEVEN**

Pre-flight checks always gave Amanda time to think. It was nice, actually. One of the few _nice_ things about being a Guardian. Just her and her thoughts in the cockpit, sealed off from the rest of the world, thoughtlessly pushing buttons and flicking switches.

But not today. Today she didn't want time to think. Amanda was flying into a war zone; she needed her head clear, her mind sharp.

Instead, she was loaded down with memories of a dead friend. Instead, she was pissed off at a member of her own fireteam.

No point dwelling. There was hull integrity to be checked, fuel-lines to be inspected, a reactor to manage. Amanda had gone to see if the wreck of her old ship was salvageable; it wasn't. Now she would be flying a brand-new Phaeton v2 into combat.

Easy. All she had to do was learn a new set of controls.

"Mitchell", she spoke into her mike, "You there?".

She'd brought the young flight mechanic onto her crew when she went to the Hangar to see about acquiring a new ship. There had been plenty with no Guardians left to come and claim them, but it had turned out that half Amanda's crew had died in Widow's Ward. Out drinking together when the City got hit.

The other half of the crew was undecided as to whether they should mourn the loss of their comrades, or be pissed that they hadn't been invited out to the bar.

"Course, ma'am. Where else would I be?", his voice came through with a wash of static.

Amanda let silence hang in the air for a moment as she cycled on the air scrubbers. "That a rhetorical question?".

"Yes ma'am". A momentary pause, then, "We've got green lights across the board. You're cleared for takeoff".

"Checks completed, all green in here. Let's punch it". She said that as much for Mitchell and the rest of her crew as for herself. Saying something badass, or at least trying to, always helped calm her pre-flight jitters. Some of her fellow Guardians said it was strange for her, one of the best pilots in the Tower, to get the shakes.

Amanda knew why she still got nerves during a launch, even after dozens of combat flights. But she didn't need to dignify them with a response.

* * *

><p>The fleet tore a hole in the fabric of space when it jumped, a cascade of blinding light that warped the edges of their ships. Time and space were shorn away by a thousand NLS drives, the universe pulling back around them and swallowing them whole. They shot across the inky blackness, bolts of light surrounded by a halo of sterile neutrinos.<p>

As quickly as they left, they arrived, dragging themselves out of a burning gash in reality. Hanging over the Moon's near-side, white bone spiderwebbed with fissures and craters, yawning hungrily below them.

The fleet made no attempt to orbit and slip carefully into their target's gravity well. It was a spear tip, plunging straight for the enemy's jugular. It continued on their course, ships shuddering with deceleration as they dove towards the surface.

The Moon was not undefended. Hanging in orbit, points of dark against the Moon's white surface, were tombships. Thousands of them scattered across the near-side hemisphere. Wedges of black metal, weapon ports glowering with sickly green light.

Comms lit up. Ghosts and shipboard computers, linked across the fleet, began to calculate distance, speed, trajectory, enemy positions and numbers. Four thousand fifty-two. The number didn't matter.

Nineteen seconds until the fleet came into firing range. Thirty, and the tombships would open fire. Weapons charged with a hum of light and power. The fleet drew in on itself, a mailed fist to punch through the scattered Hive ships.

Banks of void shields sparked to life around the Guardian ships, arc light boiling in prow-mounted cannons.

Nineteen seconds turned to ten, to five, to one.

Across the dark, spanning the gulf between the two armadas, a thousand bolts of blinding light. A silent second passed. A thousand bursts of light, screams of metal and depressurization torn away into the noiseless void.

Three thousand fifty-two.

Ten more seconds, another salvo of piercing brilliance. Black hulls were pierced, ammunition caches detonated, fuel cooked off. Two thousand fifty-two.

Twenty-nine seconds after the first volley, the mailed fist split into a thousand pieces, juddering out of formation. Pilots picked their targets, racing for the kill. The tombships fired at the scattering Guardians, before accelerating into the hole in their defenses created by the blistering arc fire that had turned half their force to so much wreckage.

Then all pretense of organization is lost, as organized action breaks down into a thousand individual dogfights. A flight of hawks, a murder of crows, all tearing at eachother with talons of flame. Burning feathers, black and white, were scattered over the Moon.

The Hive had struck a decisive blow when they attacked the City. Two million slain, Guardian and civilian alike.

Four thousand fifty-two Hive bastards didn't match the terrific casualties of the first battle. It was a start, though.

In the days to come, the Guardians would learn that no amount of death could repay the loss of good friends and brothers-in-arms.

**Again, I'm so sorry about the long wait between updates. I promise I've been putting in work on this every day. All I want to do is give all of you your Destiny fix. Don't forget to review if you really love, or really hate something about this story.**


	10. Chapter 8 - Zero Hour

**CHAPTER EIGHT**

"Achernar?".

"_Alright, Amanda_".

"Banshee?".

"_Still alive...barely_".

"Holborn?".

"_Yes, ma'am_".

"Lyra?".

"_Here too. That's all of us, I think_".

"_Still plenty of wolves howling. Wolves. Get it? Because we're-_", Holborn started, but the transmission went dead. A Ghost's voice came through in his stead.

"_I thought it would be better if you didn't have to sit through this one, Guardians. He's still trying to explain the wolves joke_".

"Good looking out", Amanda chuckled into the fireteam channel. They had all survived the opening engagement. She wasn't sure how many the fleet had lost. Fireteams were still running down the list, checking names.

She probably didn't want to know. Later she would pull up the casualty figures on her viewscreen and sift through them, looking for anyone she knew.

Later.

* * *

><p>Dotting the Moon were fifty Hive facilities, ominous citadels that were either as inactive as long-range scans belied, or else shielded by some device unknown to the City's defenders. Twenty Guardians were to be dispatched to each of these installations to establish a perimeter, and eventually to breach and secure them.<p>

Amanda and her fireteam had been assigned to the Ocean of Storms, a flat expanse of grey rock studded with grim mountains that rose unexpected like ramparts from the basalt plains. Their forward operating base was a pre-Collapse outpost, serving as the headquarters for the three hundred Guardians deployed to this region alongside the Band of Wolves.

The base had been abandoned centuries ago, bright hope decayed into dust and meteor scars.. A comms tower dominated the base, and two kilometers northwest was an old fusion coil accelerator, the titanic machine once used to hurl cargo across the solar system.

The core complex around the tower was designated as the rendezvous point for all the Guardians operating in the Ocean of Storms. In the case of an overwhelming enemy presence, all three hundred Guardians in the region would pull back here.

* * *

><p>If the Hive knew they had been defeated in orbit, they showed no sign of it. In the hours between the fleet action and the landing, the Moon remained dead. The enemy installations remained lifeless, their mausoleum doors sealed shut.<p>

The leader of their detachment, a Titan named Varen, assigned Amanda and three others to keep their jumpships in the air, running recon and providing fire support if the enemy decided to attack them while in the field.

So Amanda spent three days circling their target, a ghostly citadel thirty-seven kilometers from their headquarters at the moonbase. All the while, her detachment worked to surround it and establish a tight perimeter, half a klick out from the target.

Poking from the ribs of a low grey mountain like a tumor on the skin of the world, its iron walls were carved with glyphs that burned the eyes and made the skin crawl. It was all angular outcroppings and jagged towers, as if cut crudely from the rock itself. Lit with corpse-light, ghastly radiance that shrouded as much as true darkness. The fortress bled corruption.

Trenches were dug around it, a Guardian placed every hundred meters or so. A double watch was posted in front of the gates, wrought-iron doors that towered ten meters high, decorated with binding chains. Lyra and Holborn had gate duty.

On the fourth day, the earthworks were completed and the sixteen Guardians on the ground were in position. Amanda and the other three pilots ran regular air patrols over the area, never straying more than fifty klicks from the target.

The plan, Varen informed the group over the comms, was this; to wait one week after landfall, at which time they would crack the target open themselves. From there they would secure the entrance, moving into the lower levels and clearing them. If resistance proved overwhelming, one of the other detachments in the region could rush to their aid.

In three days, they would have to breach the Hive citadel and take it, room by room.

* * *

><p>Amanda never thought she'd say it, but she was getting tired of flying. One hundred forty-four hours of patrolling the same endless expanse of rock, and she was starting to get bored. Her and the other fliers worked in shifts, three in the air and one resting, rotating every four hours. The last week of her life had been nothing but catnaps and stale rations.<p>

When her Ghost had dipped into its joke archive to try and lighten the mood, Amanda had to restrain herself from putting a bullet in the thing. Apparently the Traveller, in its infinite wisdom, had no sense of humor.

Halfway through the seventh day of their watch, while Varen was still grappling with how best to breach the stronghold's walls, her comm crackled to life. Achernar had opened a private channel.

"Amanda?". The Awoken's voice was cool and lyrical, edged in inhuman aloofness. "I'm hearing this...scratching noise underneath my section of the trench. Sounds like frying bacon. My Ghost can't get a fix on it. Could you fly over, run a scan".

He waited a moment as she corrected her course, before amending, "It's probably nothing. Shoddy ditch-digging is all".

Her craft rolled left and pitched back, turning around to head back over the fortress and Achernar's section of the trench. With Amanda's hands busy on the sticks, she issued commands to her Ghost.

"Grab me an ERI of that section of the trench. Drop some pegs as we fly over, run a telluric current through them. I wanna see what's going on under there".

The Ghost did its best to nod, bobbing in the air and blinking its single blue eye before disappearing to do its duty.

The "pegs" she was referring to where essentially tiny missiles with a payload of electrodes, tipped with boring drills. These were guided down to the target area, where they bored into the ground and buried themselves there. When the electrode was exposed to a current, it measured the transient response of any subsurface anomaly - conducting or otherwise. It was, essentially, a cave-mapping tool.

Amanda's Phaeton screamed over Achernar's position, before turning and passing once again so her Ghost could get the read on those pegs.

"Ghost?", Amanda queried.

The tiny white construct bobbed in her cockpit for a moment, humming, its eye cycling and blinking.

"Odd. Must have laid the electrodes incorrectly, maybe they didn't bore. It's like I'm getting a...a reflection of the trench, its inverse. Recommend we make another pass, try again".

Amanda did, swinging back around and dropping a second set of pegs.

"Still getting the same read", the Ghost spoke, synthetic voice colored with confusion. "It could be...but no, it couldn't be".

"Well, don't keep me in suspense", Amanda spoke through her flight mask.

"The only explanation I can think of is that there's a tunnel, running right under Achernar's trench. But that still doesn't explain the noise he's hearing. And nothing natural is going to run that straight".

Amanda's heart skipped a beat.

"Nothing natural. Meaning, it was built".

The Ghost blinked. "It could have been dug by colonists. Same ones who built the moonbase".

"Eight hundred years ago. In the exact same location and exact same shape as the trench he dug three days ago". The Ghost was silent at this. "I'm calling it in", Amanda said, already patching Varen in on the radio. The Titan answered immediately. "_What's the situation?_".

"Achernar, Warlock on my fireteam, saying he has some noise under his trench. I dropped some pegs, and it's looking like there's some kind of tunnel right below his position. Thought you'd want to know".

There was a long pause, static hanging in the air of her cockpit.

A click sounded in her ear, and another layer of background noise was layered over the first. Light breathing, the click of heels on stone.

Then Varen's voice was back. "_Alright, I patched in Achernar. Could you repeat that again, for his sake and mine_".

Amanda did, this time rattling off the specifics of the readings she had taken, allowing Varen and Achernar's Ghosts to process the information and come to their own conclusions.

When she finished, there was another silence. Achernar broke it.

"_Varen, if you want, I can blow it open and check it out. I've got a few det-packs. More than enough to get in there if its only a few meters down_".

"Just four meters. One charge would do it easy", Amanda added.

Varen's link went dead for a few seconds, mulling the idea over in his head. Finally he spoke. "_Do it. You've got an entrenching tool? Dig a hole about two feet deep, drop the charge in there. Set it for two minutes, give yourself plenty of time to get clear_".

A click of static was the only affirmation Achernar gave before killing the comm link and going to work.

There was only a moment's pause, however, as instantly her comms lit back up. It was Varen again, this time on the squad-wide channel.

"_Listen up. Achernar reported in some noise under his section. That's section seven. Amanda's in the air right now, she ran a scan. Looks like there's a tunnel running underneath the trench, at least a part of it. Could be active. We're gonna crack section seven and see what's down there. That means everyone on alert. Dresden, I'm pulling you from thirteen and adding you to Holborn and Lyra on gate watch. That door so much as creaks, I hear about it. Understood?_".

Nineteen yes sirs were his reply, four muffled by flight masks and the dull roar of engines at the periphery of hearing.

Anxious minutes passed as Amanda flew the same patrol pattern she'd flown for days on end. Achernar had yet to say anything. Finally, while flying over the trench, she witnessed an eye-biting bloom of explosion, tiny bits of rock spraying the surrounding area. Achernar was crouched thirty meters away, a boulder between him and the detonation. Already he was picking himself up, heading towards the crater with long, loping strides.

"_Charge went off, Varen. Amanda was right, there's a tunnel down there. Dark, too_".

"_Alright, listen up_", came Varen's gravelly voice over the squad-wide. "_Sections five, six, and eight, head over to seven. The four of you get down in that tunnel, check it out. If you encounter resistance, do not engage, just pull back out to the surface. Everyone else, hold position. And Achernar, patch your HUD cam through to the squad_".

Another chorus of yes sirs. Amanda turned over control of her ship to the Ghost, pulling up the squad video feed on her aft viewscreen. She flicked her eyes away from her console to watch the tunnel from Achernar's eyes.

* * *

><p>Achernar kept his gun trained on the hole. The darkness yawned beneath him, seeming to stretch away into the planetoid's core. There was something intangibly <em>off<em> about the tunnel, something he couldn't quite place...

He tore his eyes from it, hearing the dim scuff of boots. Achernar hadn't noticed the approaching Guardians until they were nearly on him. The software in his helmet did its best to magnify the sounds outside, but the near-vacuum meant that everything sounded mute and distant.

The four of them took up positions around the hole, weapons levelled on the gaping tunnel entrance. Flashlights clicked on, casting harsh illumination into the dark below.

The walls of the passageway were bored from the bare rock, porous grey stone carved without artisanship. That said, it was perfectly straight, hugging the trench. Not natural. Chips of stone scattered the floor, already swathed in thick dust. It had been tunneled recently.

"I'll take point", Achernar offered, shouldering his rifle and crouching down on the crater slope, sliding down the loose rock and shale into the cavern.

There was noise at his back. The other Guardians falling in behind him.

At the bottom he sprang to his feet, sweeping his rifle left and right. The flashlight, fixed to the gun's barrel, shone over the lightless passage.

Nothing.

No, not quite nothing. Something. Pulling and pushing at the edges of his mind, like surf at sand, tugging at his consciousness. Whispers just beyond his hearing. Something.

He looked over his shoulder at the other Guardians, holding up two fingers and gesturing for them to go left. Achernar and the rear Guardian would go right.

They crept across the rough-hewn rock, rapidly losing the visibility provided by the opening they had entered through. Only meters from the breach, the light was gone.

"You feel that?", asked the Guardian behind him. He was a Hunter, emerald-cloaked, his visor burnished orange. Every few seconds he would turn around, pointing his gun down the empty tunnel. The other pair had all but disappeared.

Achernar nodded, his own restless breath dominating his hearing. The walls pressed tight around him, forcing the Awoken to stoop lest his head brush the ceiling. The tunnel could barely fit two men side by side.

"Yes. They were here, I think. Recently. If not now", Achernar replied.

A few more claustrophobic meters, and then there was a scratching noise. It became a low rumble, felt as much as heard. Sounded almost like frying bacon.

"Careful, Guardian", his Ghost warned drabbly.

Then the side of the tunnel behind him burst open in a shower of rock, and his helmet cam died in an inferno of static and white noise.

**A bit long, but I hope you liked it. Lot of work went into making this readable, so hopefully you guys thought it was readable. Remember to forget to follow!**


	11. Chapter 9 - Dark Force Rising

**CHAPTER NINE - DARK FORCE RISING**

Amanda watched in horror as Achernar's video feed died in white flame, a scream of static roaring into her ears until she killed the link.

The comms had already lit up, a dozen Guardians crying out for instruction from Varen.

The Titan was already barking orders into the squad-wide. "_Section four, section nine, move into the five-through-eight trench and take up position there. Everyone from four and nine's lines, spread out. Don't leave a single gap, I want all eyes on that fortress. Air patrol, close the circle around the target; don't get more than half a klick out_".

For a few minutes, everything was dead silent as the Guardians moved into new positions to fill the gap. Amanda and the other two pilots (the fourth was still on the ground, scrambling as fast as he could) veered off their patrol route and fell into a tight circle.

Varen's voice came back. "_Anyone getting any kind of transmission from Achernar or anyone else who went down into that tunnel_?".

Dead silence on the radio.

There was a long, drawn sigh from Varen's end. "_Hell. Alrigh_t".

"_Sir_?", came Lyra's voice over the comm. "_Shouldn't we send someone in after them? You just added Dresden to gate watch with me and Holborn, any one of us could-_".

Varen cut her off. "_Absolutely not. We're not sending another Guardian in there, not until I know what just happened. Amanda, get me another subsurface of that tunnel they just cracked_". She was already streaking towards Achernar's trench, priming a third set of pegs.

"_Four and nine? That's Codak and Ariadni, right?_". Two yes sirs. "_Codak, Ariadni, fill in that hole. Grab some det-packs, get your Ghosts to do the math for you_".

"Sir, you can't!", someone shouted into the radio.

It took Amanda a moment to realize that it was her who had said that.

"Sorry, sir. I shouldn't have-", she began, but Varen cut her off.

"Achernar's on your fireteam, I understand. Just don't blurt out everything you think of in the squad-wide".

"Sir?", came the voice of a Guardian Amanda didn't recognize. "There's something, I'm not sure if-".

"Spit it out, son", came Varen's authoritative grumble.

"F-frying bacon, sir. Right under my section. I think they must be tunneling".

Then the radio came alive as every Guardian on the ground began to shout the same thing, frying bacon, that crackling sound of porous rock being bored away. It was right under them, all of them.

Suddenly the ground began to shake. Amanda couldn't feel it, up in her ship, but she could see it; the ground cracking and splitting all around the Hive fortress, grey dust rising like storm clouds from the gashes.

"Out of the trenches, now!", roared Varen to the squad. It was the last direct order Amanda heard, the last sane words in this war against the dead.

Then they came, boiling from the wounded surface of the Moon. Rank after rank after rank of thralls, legions of the undead pouring from the splintered earth all around the Guardians. Thousands of them, swarming over the carefully-positioned Guardians and their trenches.

Amanda had no time to think, wheeling her craft back towards the fray at a dangerously tight angle.

The fortress was coming alive, she could see it. The corpse-light that colored its walls before had turned to blazing radiance, a cold, pale glow. Now the columns beside the gate were moving, except the columns were knights and the shadows behind them rose up hissing sorcery. Those chains of hell-forged iron that bound the gate were straining as something was trying to push its way through the gate.

Amanda could see Holborn and Lyra, only a few hundred meters from the gate, taking cover on the top of a low ridge that flanked it. The light of gunfire blazed from them, peppering the oncoming horde with tracers.

That was the last she saw of them, for now she was racing towards the swarming foe. Pulling her nose down at a treacherous angle, she squeezed the firing stud on her stick and watched as arc fire blazed from her Phaeton's chin cannon.

The discharge of energy tore through dozens of thralls as she swept over their massing ranks, blowing apart the screaming cadavers. Hot corpse-ash scattered into the lunar wind.

Again and again she ran perilous attack runs, strafing the loping hordes with fire and lightning, cutting down untold hundreds as the minutes drew on.

It took her seventeen to realize that the only comms chatter was from her fellow jumpship pilots. Varen's commands had stopped, and the enemy below had stopped their ceaseless charge. Now the horde had stilled, milling confusedly. There was no gunfire below.

One of the pilots swore. "We need to turn around, get back to the rendezvous point".

He didn't await confirmation, instead pulling out and veering back towards the moonbase. It left them little choice but to follow. There was nothing for them here. They could kill and kill and kill until their ammunition ran dry, but thousands would still be left. The position was lost, and the four of them alone could not regain it.

The only hope, now, lay in retreat.


	12. Chapter 10 - The Calm

**CHAPTER TEN - THE CALM**

Amanda's squadron were flying in a tight formation, fast and low. She took point, her Phaeton's guns cycling from cold to hot. Swarming over the plain before them was another horde, the fifth in as many days.

Unopposed, it would reach the moonbase in a little under six hours.

The Hunter primed her arc thrower. There was some opposition for them.

"Need I remind anyone", Amanda spoke into the comms, "That it would be highly inadvisable to bail out over this mess?".

A chorus of no ma'ams.

"If you get hit", she added, "And by the Light some of us will be, try to crash in the middle of them. Take as many of the bastards with you as possible".

Fifteen yes ma'ams.

She had picked up the other pilots in the days after Varen's company had been lost, all of them from groups that had been likewise swarmed.

Whatever was happening in the wider picture, it was bad. In the Ocean of Storms alone, a third of the Guardians had been lost so far, maybe more. A hundred dead or captured. Amanda shuddered at the thought. Hopefully none had been captured.

The order had come down, from none other than Lord Saladin, to pull back. A "tactical retreat" he had called it. It had been little more than a panicked flight across the Moon, Guardians turning tail and fleeing back to designated strongpoints.

So Amanda found herself the most experienced pilot in the Ocean, tasked with leading what air power they had left in defense of the moonbase.

She was to hold the Hive forces back for as long as she could while they fortified the fallback point and waited for any more retreating Guardians.

The Hive poured from the Moon in endless legions, and so far all Amanda had accomplished was to deplete their ammunition and fuel. No matter how many they killed, there were always more.

Amanda set aside these thoughts, and focused on the target ahead of them.

* * *

><p>What followed was a wicked, weaving scrap of a battle that saw more than half the squadron spiralling to the ground.<p>

Two dozen tombships had ambushed them, grounded days in advance behind ridges that flanked the horde's route. When the Guardians had started strafing runs on the swarming thralls, the enemy craft burst from cover and engaged.

Under withering fire from knights below and the tombships on either flank, the Guardians had broken off their attack runs to duel the enemy aircraft.

Eventually the blocky Hive craft lay smashed and burning on the lunar plain below, along with the heaps of thralls they killed with their fall

A lucky (or unlucky) hit to her Phaeton's fuel line had left Amanda bleeding fuel instead of fireballing in the air. She was forced to pull out of her attack run, veering back around in the direction of the moonbase.

Amanda had just enough fuel to set her ship down in the path of the horde, about a kilometer ahead of them. They'd be on her in minutes.

She quickly took stock of her position. She had landed at the top of a low rise, up which the Hive were charging even now. The ridges on either side boxed them in, so they would have to go straight through her, hundreds of them.

They would tear her apart.

Amanda laid out her weapons on the ground before her. Sniper rifle, fourteen rounds. Pulse rifle, three hundred rounds. Sidearm, fifty rounds. Incendiary grenades, three. And a single det pack.

Not enough to kill an entire army. But maybe enough to stop one.

She grabbed the det pack and the incendiaries, racing off to her left, towards one of the ridges. The pass was only three hundred meters wide or so, and she cleared the distance in seconds.

Running in low gravity required finesse. Normally she would just jump, but in a combat situation those seconds hanging in there air painted a target on her back. Instead she proceeded in a crouch, leaping forward like a bullet from foot to foot in a slithering, side-to-side motion. It was awkward, but it kept her quick and low.

A final jump carried her the last thirty meters up onto the ridge. "Ghost", she cried into the wind, "I need to collapse this ridge. Where am I putting these charges?".

And her Ghost was there, peeking over her shoulder and guiding her. She worked her way up the jagged stone face of the ridge, bodily launching herself from grab to grab. Precious seconds passed as she set the explosives.

Amanda looked at the approaching horde. Two minutes, at most, before they were on top of her. Amanda set the charge for thirty seconds, then hurled herself from the ridge.

The low gravity allowed her to land without injury, kicking up white dust.

Then she ran, low and fast, back to her jumpship. It was out of fuel, but should still be operational. Some basic functions - like weapons - would be active.

Amanda leapt up onto the hull and ripped open the access panel on the right wing. A board of buttons and switches was there, and she flicked a few of them before entering a four-letter code. It came to her easily, burned into her memory.

There was a pop of depressurization as a hatch slid open on the Phaeton's angular fuselage. Inside was her ship's ammunition cache; chain after chain of machine gun shells, arc bolt batteries, the works. Her eyes lingered for a moment, damning herself for the waste.

Then she picked her way back across the hull to the cockpit entrance, slipping inside as quickly as she could. A glance at the encroaching horde revealed that they were only a few hundred meters away now, aiming to rush right over her.

Inside the cockpit, she flicked off the manual weapons control, set it to automatic and "Fire Ready" mode.

Instantly the jumpship began to fire into the oncoming wave of thralls, high-caliber shells tearing through rotten flesh and arc bolts pulverising bodies. It would continue to do so, automatically picking targets, until it ran out of ammunition. A great howl went up from the Hive, and they sped onwards.

Amanda bolted from the cockpit, exiting just in time to see a blinding flash as the ridge detonated. Then a monstrous wave of overpressure bore down on her, flinging her from her perch on the ship's hull and sending her hurtling towards the opposite ridge.

The charges had done their work. The left ridge was collapsing, spilling grey rock and ash down into the pass. The tide of molten rubble flowed all the way to her ship, burying its landing gears in flaming rock.

The Hive would have no choice, now, but to pass right by her ship.

Picking herself up and shouldering her sniper rifle, she took careful aim. Amanda centered her sights on the target with practiced ease.

Now all she had to do was wait.

The Hive came roaring on, a macabre funeral procession, loping strides carrying them a meter into the air with every step. The swarm was fifty meters from her downed jumpship. Then twenty-five. Fifteen. They were on top of it, swarming over the hull and around it, even as its weapons chewed them apart in their dozens.

The corpses clawed at its cannons and arc-throwers, trying to rip them from their mountings. Others ignored the guns and charged past, making to leave the valley.

When her jumpship sat in the middle of the thronged Hive, Amanda fired a single shot, sending a deadly sabot round straight into the exposed ammo cache of her ship.

The resultant explosion was very satisfying. For minutes afterward, bits and pieces of Hive, still burning, showered the valley. Nothing was left of the ship but smoldering fragments and an expanding cloud of liquid metal.

"Sound off", she spoke breathlessly into the squadron channel.

One by one, the surviving fliers radioed in. Of the sixteen she had attacked the horde with, seven were left.

* * *

><p>The squadron limped back to base in silence, landing on the makeshift airstrip outside the walls of the compound.<p>

The base was tended by a small complement of frames, busily digging earthworks around the perimeter. A few Ghosts were at work on the accelerator two klicks out, trying to bring it online; for what, Amanda wasn't sure.

The Guardians were readying for an assault, moving crates of ammunition into buildings, setting up guns in windows, laying mines outside the walls. They were preparing for a siege.

Amanda picked her way through them, headed for the comms building; that was HQ. Wei Ning, the company commander, was set up there with her squad leaders. She was a Warlock, and an old one - three centuries by most reckonings. Clad in pristine maroon robes, embroidered with geometric patterns, the woman was fiercely proud.

Amanda entered the war room, Wei and her people already there. They were gathered around the hololith table, the flickering blue display showing a terrain map of the Ocean of Storms.

Wei's cold eyes met hers for an instant, before flicking back to the table. "Holliday", she greeted curtly. "Is that horde cleaned up?".

Amanda nodded as she strode into the room, taking her position beside the table.

"Any casualties?".

Amanda swallowed hard. "Yes. Nine".

The assembled Guardians swore under their breath.

Wei closed her eyes, rubbing circles into her temples. "Shit. Alright. I want a full report later. But for now, we need to deal with the matter at hand".

"Which is?".

Wei opened her eyes and moved her fingers to the hololith controls, zooming in to a patch of land about fifty kilometers south of the base.

"As you'll recall, we pulled one of your guys off the squadron for a recon run. This", the Warlock said as she brought up a video feed over the terrain map, "Is what he found".

The playback was grainy, but it looked like a flyover of a shadow. A huge shadow, pooling on the white surface of the Moon, cast by nothing. Then the edges of the display fuzzed as it zoomed in on this darkness.

It was an army. Thousands upon thousands of thralls and acolytes, massive ogres lumbering through their serried ranks. Knights, their armor splashed with yellow paint, stood proud above the swarm, roaring marching orders. Above them floated wizards, hissing sorceries and curses, clad in torn and mouldering robes.

And in the midst of them was a huge figure, towering above all the rest. The camera zoomed in again, tried to focus on the thing, but before the image could resolve the figure raised an arm, and a blinding bolt of light split the video feed in two.

That was it. Amanda realized she'd been holding her breath. She exhaled, swore.

"What was that?", she asked, turning to Wei Ning.

The older woman shook her head. "We have no idea. The video ends there. Your guy, Raien, never reported back in. We have to assume he went down".

Amanda nodded, turned towards the door and began to walk.

"I can have my squadron in the air in ten minutes, I'll-".

"You'll stay put is what you'll do", said Wei Ning, stopping her halfway to the door. "A half strength squadron up against that? Assuming it's not another trap, that they don't have tombships waiting, what would you even do?".

Amanda stood there, boiling in her helplessness. Wei was right, of course.

"Whatever that..._thing_ was, it can take out jumpships with a wave of its arm. You wouldn't last fifteen seconds".

Wei took a step towards Amanda. "So here's what you're going to do. You're going to go back to the landing field, and strip all the weapons, ammo, and fuel from your jumpships. Bring them back here, and we're going to use them in defense of the base".

Amanda bit back pain at the idea of mothballing her fighters, saying instead, "If we dismantle our ships, there's no escape route. We're stuck to this base". Assenting murmurs rose from the squad leaders. No one liked the idea of crippling their mobility just for some extra firepower.

Wei sighed deeply. She had clearly been considering this for some time. "I know. I know. But if we scatter, we're done. We lose cohesion, leadership...we stop being an army. If that happens, we'll be hunted across the Moon and picked off one by one".

Wei looked at them with stony resolve, almost concealing the pain in her eyes. "This week I have lost a hundred Guardians. I will not lost the rest of them".

Then, quieter, almost to herself, "I will not".


	13. Chapter 11 - The Storm

**CHAPTER ELEVEN - THE STORM**

When the Hive arrived, it was like a titanic cloud had passed in front of the sun and marred the earth with shadow. A shadow that stretched for miles and miles. A teeming shadow that spilled over the grey rock, a tide of steel beetles, a host of bone and iron marshalled forth from the gates of hell.

Endless ranks of thralls and acolytes, barely kept in check by the knights who towered above them, roaring songs older than the Moon they stood on. Drums beat sonorously in the vacuum, the tramp of a million armored feet.

Amanda watched as the dead legions swarmed across the plain around the base. The great horde that had come from the east now moved to surround the beleaguered Guardians, blocking all escape.

For the fifteenth time in as many minutes, she ran checked her weapons. Removed the chain of shells from her machine gun, ran it back through. Clicked the safety on and off. Chambered a round. Pulled back the sliding rack.

All good. Just had to wait. Just had to still her pounding heart, and wait.

Wizards hovered over the army, chanting ancient words that were not words, that tore claw-like at reality. Their voices were deep and grumbling, high and lilting. They were not human voices, not anything approaching human. These beings of foul sorcery were utterly alien, utterly incomprehensible.

The comlink opened, and over the general channel flowed soft, murmured words. A prayer. To what, Amanda wasn't sure. The Traveller, it's Light? She didn't really care.

Another voice joined, blunt and flat. Wei Ning's voice. "_Cut that shit. No non-essential chatter_". The orison stopped, and silence fell.

In every window, on every roof, Guardian guns stood ready to repel the enemy assault. Two hundred against thousands, tens of thousands...they couldn't beat the Hive back. But they had to. There was no choice but to win.

Amanda was in a squat structure at the edge of the base, in a window facing the north wall. Mounted on the windowsill was her weapon, an autocannon stripped from one of her fighters. Boxes of ammunition sat on the floor beside her.

She watched the enemy for a few more minutes, moving into position. Thralls, snarling and scratching, every once in a while starting towards the Guardians before being beaten back into rank by acolytes.

Then they stopped, the whole vast legion coming to a grinding halt. There they stood, standing in the cold starlight, the dust of their march pooling around them.

In the distance, a great cry was raised. It barely reached the defenders through the vacuum, carried by soft lunar winds, but it was there nonetheless. Thousands upon thousands of the dead, bellowing for blood.

They were charging.

Charging alongside lumbering ogres, growling battle tanks made flesh, their eyeless skulls crackling with purple werelight. The behemoths crashed through their own ranks, smashing dozens underfoot, dry bones snapping beneath their titanic tread.

There was a crackle of static. Wei Ning's voice again. "_We have seven minutes until they reach the max effective range of the wall guns, eleven before they hit the walls. Don't wait for optimums. As soon as they're inside effective range, open up_".

The Guardians were ready. The enemy was coming. It was time to face up to why they had been sent here.

Amanda focused on breathing, shutting her eyes to the oncoming storm. Two hundred rounds in the first chain. Five boxes, two chains to a box. Two thousand two hundred shells, 27mm armor-piercing. Each one would tear right through a thrall, and the one behind it.

Would it be enough?

Six minutes crept by, Amanda counting every second. Six and a half. Then, with ten seconds until the Hive came into firing range, "_Alright. Wall guns ready. Four seconds. Three. Two. Fire_".

Dozens of machine guns and autocannons burst to life, high caliber rounds leaping from their barrels and threading the front lines. Thralls burst apart in explosions of burning ash, acolytes were smashed to dust, pieces were blown out of knights, ogres fell under the withering barrage. Wizards, caught by the fusillade of explosive shells, fell.

Hundreds died in the first salvo. Thousands more came on.

"_Reload!_", Wei Ning roared over the dying gunfire. "_Missiles, range in five, four, three, two, fire!_".

There was a whoosh and a roar as trails of white smoke burst into the black, blazing points of light at their fore. They landed amongst the Hive, craters appearing in the enemy horde, explosions of dust and bone and metal.

The second volley began. And the third. And the fourth. Rockets blew whole regiments to pieces, sniper teams pinned ogres and picked them apart. In any human army, the devastation inflicted would have broken them, sent them running from the field.

But not this army. Not the Hive. The blood-mad howls never ended as they charged, trampling their dead and wounded underfoot.

Then they crashed against the walls with a sound like the heavens breaking open, like a thousand peals of thunder.

Guardians on the walls, armed with nothing but their rifles, turned their barrels downward and unloaded magazine after magazine into the horde.

Ogres bellowed and beat their fists against the plasteel, pounding sections of armor plating into dust. Knights roared and fired, bolts of blue light crashing into the wall and blowing it to pieces. Thralls smashed into the walls and began to climb, scrabbling over a pile of their comrades to reach the top. Acolytes unleashed furious counter-fire on the Guardians.

Amanda watched as a Titan died. A bolt of void fire slipped into his visor, slipped out the back of his skull. Crimson shards burst into the vacuum, blood already crystallized by the cold. He tipped forward, slowly, and fell like a feather from the wall.

She turned her eyes away as the thralls fell on him, tearing open his armor and feasting on the man within.

Looking out over the wall, she could see a carpet of the enemy dead outside the base. Thousands already lay broken on the field. Yet still they came.

Wizards soared over the base, hissing death and unleashing bolts of simmering Darkness on the Guardians below. Snipers cracked, and rounds tore through their tattered robes.

Thralls leapt onto the walls, a few at first, then more. Guardians shot them and bayoneted them, clubbed the aliens with their rifle stocks and sent them tumbling into the horde below.

For a few minutes, the battle was locked in stasis. The Hive could not gain the wall, but the Guardians could not stop them from leaping onto it. More of the Traveller's emissaries fell under a barrage of purple hellfire. Amanda watched as a thrall gained the wall and threw its arms around a Guardian, pressing her close. It threw itself back down into the horde below, and both of them died.

Then part of the wall fell, an ogre bursting through in an explosion of dust and pulverised concrete. It bellowed in triumph, a predatory smile lighting its face. Then half a dozen missiles blew it to pieces.

"_Breach, I say again there is a breach at North-3. Breach at North-3. Adam, get your men on it_", came Wei-Ning's commanding voice.

The Hive were already pouring through the gap, wide enough for half a dozen men to pass through abreast. Vicious gunfire tore into the rushing enemies, but it was nowhere near enough to stem the tide.

Amanda turned her autocannon on the breach, explosive rounds tearing apart anything that stepped in front of them. It wouldn't stop them, but it would buy Adam's fireteam precious seconds to get into the fight.

She fired until her gun glowed white hot, smoke spooling from the barrel. There was the distinctive _click_ as the chain ran dry. Amanda swore and bent down, popping open another box and grabbing a fresh chain.

She had a feeling that those boxes would be empty before this battle was done.

* * *

><p>Minutes turned to hours. The wall fell in a dozen more places, and the enemy pressed in upon the Guardians. On one stretch of wall they were overwhelmed, forced to pull back and level their weapons on the lip, shooting down anything that gained the top.<p>

Amanda's gun ran dry, and she swung over the windowsill and down onto the ground below, landing lightly in the low gravity. The Hunter shouldered her rifle and ran to the nearest gap, adding her fire to the Guardians' already there. An endless tide of thralls was trying to push through the punishing stream of bullets and into the base. Hundreds of enemy corpses lay ruined in the breach, choking the Hive's ingress.

She fired for minutes, burning through ammunition at a heinous rate.

There was a howl more piercing than the others, and a shadow passed over Amanda. She looked up, her rifle still levelled at the gap, still firing.

A thrall was in the air, having cleared the wall entirely. Its mouth yawned wide in an animal grin, like a dog with a juicy steak sitting in front of it.

Amanda turned her gun on it even as the creature fell on a Guardian behind her, crashing into the Warlock and bearing him to the ground in a burst of dust. Crystallized blood filled the air as the two thrashed on the ground, locked in a silent death struggle. Claws flashed in the starlight.

She swore under her breath. Couldn't get a clean shot.

The Warlock managed to bring one of his hands to bear under the thing, pressing his palm flat against the thrall's ribcage. A purple light began to build, before discharging with a _pop_ of displacing air.

The thrall went flying, and Amanda put three rounds through its skull.

She turned her attention back to the Warlock, running to help him up. Getting closer, she saw his throat had been torn open, spewing frozen blood into the vacuum. He was gagging and gurgling, his chest spasming, his hand reaching out to her and clawing at the air.

Amanda put a fourth round in the Guardian's head, and he went limp. _His Ghost would have him back soon_, she thought, turning back towards the breach. She had done it before. It didn't phase her.

The tide seemed to be slowing, the press of bodies choking the flow of thralls. The roaring battle cry from beyond the walls was dimming. The gunfire from around the base was slowing. What had been like a tidal wave of Hive at the onset of the battle was now a trickle, every few seconds a thrall leaping the wall and being brought down by the Guardians.

For the first time in an hour, Amanda had no target. She reloaded, and waited. She listened. Almost nothing. Dozens of Guardians lay dead and wounded among the ruined walls, but thousands of the Hive had been put down.

Maybe they had won.

Then she heard it. Thought she didn't dismissed it at first. Nerves, she told herself. They had won, but the horror of facing this enemy had fooled her senses into thinking it wasn't over.

Frying bacon, the crackle of porous lunar rock splintering.

"Tunnels!", Amanda screamed into the general comms at the top of her lungs, "Fucking tunnels!". Instantly there was a chorus of cries from Guardians all over the base, all confirming what she had feared; the Hive were below them.

"_Alright_", crackled Ning's voice. "_Everyone, get on top of the walls, on a roof, get up high, high as you can. Move!_".

And they did, a pounding flight from the ground that was even now falling away beneath their feet.

Amanda spotted a piece of the wall still standing, and she bounded towards it, not bothering to stay low but leaping high into the air. She had never, except perhaps once, moved faster in her life.

By the time she was atop the scorched chunk of concrete, the bare grey rock had fallen away, revealing dark hollows below the base. Everything was silent for a moment, as the dust settled and the crackling ceased. Amanda tracked her rifle up and down the length of the tunnels, searching for movement, breathing quick, shallow breaths.

Then she felt it, almost imperceptible. A slight draining of color, a dulling at the edges of her vision. Talons of vague cold slipping easily into her flesh, her bones. Something leaching her strength away, stealing her Light.

She felt Darkness.

Something was moving, down in the darkness. Something vast and awful and old.

It pulled itself up into the light with talons of bone. Fleshless hands with too many fingers gripped the surface. The lifeless thing drew itself up over the cavern edge.

A great white shape, its skull crowned in black fire, emerald lights leering from empty sockets. Its bones were carved with runes that blurred and stung Amanda's eyes. Jagged spines shot from its broad shoulders. It stood three stories tall.

And the sword it bore...Longer than the beast was tall, a blade blacker than black. Its was matte, stealing the starlight and reflecting none. It was a wicked, curving weapon, its crossguard sawtoothed, a gem on its pommel burning with stolen Light.

Amanda felt the cold sink into her core, crushing her. She could barely breathe. It was looking at her, she was sure, she could feel its eyes on her but it didn't have eyes just lights corpse lights she couldn't think breathe breathe she couldn't remember how to breathe-

Her Ghost floated lazily into her field of vision, breaking her reverie. Its blue eye flickered like a failing light bulb. Frost coated its shell. "_GUA_rd_Ia_Nnnn", came its broken voice, a dozen broken frequencies.

Then it cracked. And split. And shattered. The pieces fell slowly. Amanda felt its death like a knife of cold in her mind, and she cried out in pain, doubling over.

The thing that had clawed its way from the pit stood with sword in hand, leering at her. It had no muscles or sinew, but it seemed to grin, its jaws creeping open to reveal a yawning blackness.

Something moved on a rooftop. Maroon robes shifted, a bronze helm lifted. Wei Ning.

"Well", she shouted into the vacuum, her words dim and mute, "Are we going to kill this thing or what?".

Amanda hauled herself to her feet. She couldn't remember falling over. Her consciousness blurred and shifted, and she felt her Ghost's absence like a migraine.

"Yes we are", she murmured to herself, chambering a round.

* * *

><p>All she could remember were snapshots of horror. Shards of memory, macabre flashes.<p>

The swordbearer, gripping the handle of its infernal weapon. Grinning. Bowing its head. Its skeletal hands tightened, and then it leapt. It moved like quicksilver.

Shattered Ghosts littered the ground.

Wei Ning's blade met the enemy's, a bolt of lightning passing between them.

An exo, torn in half, tubes and wires trailing from its shattered midriff. The light in its eyes was dead. Coolant pooled around it.

The swordbearer slicing a building in half, bisecting it perfectly.

It put its fist through half a meter of plasteel, grabbing the Guardian behind the wall and crushing him. Blood boiled from every joint in his armor.

A black-hole blade, stained crimson with Guardian blood. Wei-Ning's blood.

A Guardian in its hand. It unhinged its jaw, bringing the Hunter to its lips. He screamed before the end. It slid his legs into its mouth. "No", he screamed. "No no no no no no no no no no no help help help help help _help help HELP PLEASE_". The crunch of bone, the burst of blood. His screams became shrill, wordless. She looked away. Another crunch. The screams stopped.

A woman tried to run. Its hand shot out, seizing her. It slammed her into the ground again and again until her armor was shattered. It hung her upside down, held her legs, _pulled_. She was torn in half like tissue paper.

Eventually Amanda ran. She didn't fight it, never even pointed her gun at it. Great, bounding leaps carried her into the lunar wilderness. For hours she ran, the swordbearer too busy with the slaughter to follow.

Time passed. Days, maybe weeks. She was starving, thirsty. A tombship overhead. Things were falling from it, dead things, but alive enough to howl and laugh.

They swarmed over her, heedless of her gunfire. Grabbed her, dragged her down, cast aside her weapons, beat her senseless.

She grabbed her knife, tried to slit her own throat before they could take her. They tore it from her hands.

Amanda had been captured.

**After her bout with bronchitis, our author returns triumphant! Sorry about that wait guys. I warned you at the beginning, but I'd like to reiterate that other things than Destiny tend to happen in my life, and that makes it hard to update sometimes. I apologize, and I'll try to update again as soon as possible, but I wouldn't hold out hope for another update this week...**


	14. Communique 2

_BY ORDER OF THE CITY CONSENSUS AND THE GUARDIAN VANGUARD_

ALL SHIPS IMMEDIATE/REPEAT AND RELAY

We hereby terminate all organized combat operations on or around Earth's Moon.

Effective immediately we declare the existence of an interdiction on the Moon and cis-Lunar space. Guardians operating in this interdict will receive no formal support from the Vanguard or from assets of the City. We urge Guardians to exhibit the greatest care and consideration in approaching the interdicted space.

We furthermore derogate all strategic objectives concerned with the recovery of assets or information from the Lunar surface, and, without exemption, cancel in whole and in all its parts the effort to establish a beachhead and strategic presence upon the Moon.

This interdict will remain in effect until such time as the hostile presence on the Moon poses a demonstrable existential threat, or until intelligence is obtained that leads to the defeat of the enemy leadership elements recently encountered.

Guardians with an accurate assessment of losses in the recent days, or with intelligence on the nature and method of hostile resistance, should report to the Vanguard immediately for debriefing.


	15. Chapter 12 - Descent

**CHAPTER TWELVE - DESCENT**

What came thereafter was never fully clear to her.

There were black caverns, chains of hell-forged steel. And others around her, not the Hive, but other Guardians. She could not have said who.

Her senses functioned after a sort, but her mind was clouded. Things came in snatches, moments, all framed in heady oblivion.

_Standing now, amongst others. Green flames lick the walls, lighting everything in pale radiance. Guardians stand to either side of her, stripped of their armor. An acolyte walks down the line, prods them with clawed fingers._

_It stops, dead eyes on her. Warbles something to another. She can almost understand it. It had said-_

But as quickly as they came, they would fade, and darkness would swallow her whole.

Darkness.

Until her mind cleared once more, for a few brief heartbeats.

She was eating, swallowing whole a gruesome worm they had given her. It squirmed in her throat and she gagged, water streaming from her eyes.

Vague shapes moving before her, resolving from obscurity. A wizard and its attendants. Its rank breath in her ear, words of such terrible weight that she doubled in pain. She forgot them as soon as they had been said.

Then chains again, burning cold on her bare arms, heavier than a neutron star. They leached away her strength, her life, her Light. Chained to a spike of metal. A prisoner.

* * *

><p>Finally, after an eternity of limbo, her mind snapped back into place.<p>

Two acolytes held her fast by the shoulders, chattering to eachother. A third brought forward plates of armor, held them up to her. A fitting. One seized her chin, tilted her head towards the light. It screeched something, prodding her chest.

Another entered the room, something like an ovipositor gleaming in its claws.

Amanda bolted forward. Her jailers were surprised, and she broke free of them.

They cried out, rushing her. Freezing claws were on her, tearing skin she realized was bare. They were trying to bring her down to the floor.

She was weak, her Light faint, but she was still a Guardian.

She threw them aside, bearing one to the ground and seizing the weapon from its hip. Useless in human hands, but still heavy. She stove in its kull with the piece of iron.

Turning, the others had their weapons out, crackling with void fire. The last, holding the ovipositor in its hands, held back. She could see something in the instrument, moving.

They stared eachother down across the room for a moment, before Amanda darted forward, flying barefoot across the floor.

She was too slow. A bolt of energy tore past, scorching her ribs. The Guardian crashed to the floor, crying out in pain. Her side was cracked and blackened. No armor, just pale flesh.

They were on her in a flash, four strong arms holding her down. Her face was pressed against the floor, pinned by a four-clawed hand.

Then something sharp pierced her neck, and the world fell away.

* * *

><p>More time passed, time and endless darkness. Being dragged through twisted passageways, past altars where Guardians languished, barely alive.<p>

A long time spent in a pitch black cell, so small she could barely stand. Maybe hours, maybe months.

All the while, Amanda felt wrong. She would touch her neck, and the skin around where they had injected her would be hot and itchy. She would scratch it, and skin would peel away.

She would wretch, often, on all fours in her tiny cell, back heaving until she thought there could be no fluid left in her body. They had done something to her.

Then they would come and leave a dish of those awful worms, writhing in mucous. She tried to eat them, but after a time no longer had the will.

So they began to force-feed her, holding her while she thrashed weakly. They were keeping her alive for something.

* * *

><p>The rash on her neck spread, until her whole body crawled with fire ants and she had scraped away every inch of skin. She felt wrong.<p>

Sometimes she tried to talk to herself, anything to hear a human voice in this prison. Sometimes she would open her mouth to speak, and Hive words would spill out.

When it happened, she would try to stop and find herself unable. Once the flow of alien speech began it could not be halted. When her efforts to stop were fiercest, she would laugh at herself in a strange, chittering manner.

Amanda stopped talking to herself.

* * *

><p>One day (hour? minute? week? month? year?) she felt it moving underneath her skin. At first, she thought she was mad. Hoped she was. Prayed.<p>

She pressed her fingers to her throat. She shut her eyes to the dark and waited, feeling for a heartbeat.

Two pulses.

Amanda screamed until her throat was raw.

* * *

><p>When they came to feed her again, they found her lying in a pool of blood. Hers, and something else's.<p>

She had broken her leg, badly, a compound fracture. Ragged bone jutted from her calf. A sliver of it was still in her hand, a crude scalpel, used to excise a tumor.

That tumor had fought.

When she had cut into her neck with that shard of herself, it had pressed itself up against her throat to try and escape.

When she had pinned it with her makeshift knife, it wrapped itself around her esophagus. _If I go, you go_. Amanda was sure she had heard it say that.

When she had torn it screaming (it or her?) from her neck, it had snapped at her with half-formed jaws and spat acid in her eyes.

Now it lay crushed in their blood. Tendrils like roots spilled from it, tendrils that had twined themselves with her nerves and hijacked her brain.

Her guards, inhuman as they were, seemed struck by this.

* * *

><p>They moved her after that, after she had ripped their child from her neck and killed it.<p>

She was blind and broken, but doubted she would remain that way for long. They were trying to break her, or use her, something. They wouldn't let her die. They would set the bones and fill her up with blood and give her back her sight.

Amanda knew that they would not let the torture end.

* * *

><p>She was nursed back to health by the tender ministrations of a wizard.<p>

It sang to her a melancholic lullaby, crooning and preening, cupping her jaw in its talons, stroking her face, before it saw the extent of her injuries.

The wizard clawed Amanda's neck, searching, opening her wounds back up to find what was no longer there.

She grinned through blood and bile. Whatever they had tried to do to her, she'd stopped it. The wizard would see. Then it would kill her, and she could escape this nightmare. Being a Guardian meant knowing you would die one day, and accepting that.

But then Amanda's smile fell.

The wizard wailed, heart-rending and inconsolable, a piercing cry that stopped time. And in its cry was something old and deep and _human_. Something that grabbed Amanda's heart and squeezed down on it.

She heard in the wizard's cry that same crushing tide that had borne down on her when Cass had died.

This was the sound of a mother who had lost her child.

Amanda bit back tears. The Guardian screamed, raging against the restraints that held it, against the weakness of its other half. Amanda began to weep, eyes watering. The Guardian gritted its jaw and held its tongue, refusing to give voice to its humanity. Amanda's face melted into sobs. The Guardian beat at itself, refusing, _refusing_.

Then Amanda and the Guardian and the wizard, all three, howled for what had been taken from them.

* * *

><p>Finally she was taken to another cell.<p>

A guard at either shoulder, a third behind her, the barrel of its gun pressed against her back.

Going down a long hallway carved from the lunar rock, they stopped before a door.

On a spoken command from one of her jailers, it slid open, a crack in the stone yawning to reveal a wide chamber.

Braziers of sickly green flame lit the room's black walls, making them shine like oil.

Huddled in the corners, bound with chains that did not gleam despite the light, where vague shapes.

Other prisoners, she thought as she was pushed into the room.

Other Guardians.

The shapes, as one, turned their heads to look at her with blind eyes.

One spoke in a wavering voice.

"Amanda?", asked Banshee-44.

**Well, there we go! Sorry that took so long...unfortunately, I wouldn't expect updates to get any faster for a while. I've got two (yes two) weddings to go to this weekend, and I've got a play coming up next week. Hope you're enjoying it so far!**


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